This article explores the historical development of youth work in Croatia, over the course of a two-decades civil society development process in a post-conflict country. The focus of this paper is on identifying foundations as well as trends and patterns relevant for an historical analysis of Croatian youth work. We seek to offer a historical and path-dependent scenario for describing targeted aspects of the ‘evolution’ of Croatian youth work. By drawing from available data from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and from personal experience, we describe three key phases of youth work development: (I) the period of early 1990s, we recognize as a ‘direct peace building’ youth work as it was characterized with bottom-up peace building and non-violent civic action of thousands of young people ; (II) the rise and diffusion of non- formal education youth work during the mid and late 1990s ; (III) the growth of a networked youth sector and a focus on youth policy advocacy starting in 2000, with strong and fruitful cooperation among various actors on the national NGO scene. Such categorization highlights various practices what we consider to represent youth work in a specific (and contested) national framework – (I) young people being engaged in direct peace building and non-violent civic actions during the war and post-war transition ; (II) young people being engaged in various non- formal educational programs provided by the youth NGOs, created for young people but also in a cooperation with young people ; (III) youth initiatives and NGOs networking and young people being engaged in a long-term advocacy process. We argue that by becoming a member of European Union, Croatia has to articulate what youth work represents within their national framework, as various practices that we find quite important and influential are neglected within the EU youth policy. Work with young people with fewer opportunities is being presented as a case study, building up on our observation that contemporary youth work continues to be embedded in civil society development and non-formal education.
